Hasnain says:

As much as I love various programming language designs and discussions, the community aspects are hard to ignore. And often turn terrible.

“Who ultimately is responsible for turning some team discomfort into disgracing a public expert? How are we going to hold them accountable?
How do we put safeguards in place so that this doesn't happen again?
How can Rust not only be held accountable now, but maintain long-term accountability into the future?”

Hasnain says:

“What do you think is special about New York City’s halal restaurants?

Sameen Choudhry: In New York, there’s so many different ethnicities and backgrounds. And because we all live in New York City, we’re friends with each other. All of these ethnicities and backgrounds interest us, and we want to try their things … Now that a lot of the first-generation are a little older and starting their own businesses, that’s in the back of their head.”

Hasnain says:

"The search for an aperiodic monotile appears to have come to an end. Or has it? When tiling the plane aperiodically with the hat, you also need its reflection (what you get if you flip the tile over). Maybe there’s a yet-undiscovered aperiodic monotile out there that doesn’t require its mirror image. Find it and you’ll be famous. The inspiration might be right under your feet."

Hasnain says:

I don't know why I spent a bunch of time over a lot of days reading this paper, but I did, and I'm sharing here. Learned a lot about history, economics, and biology and food science from this one.

"Use of spices takes advantage of plant defensive compounds. Not surprisingly, in view of their evolved functions, these phytochemicals have antioxidant, antimicrobial, and antiviral properties. The use of spices essentially borrows plants' recipes for survival and puts them to similar use in cooking. Over time, recipes should “evolve” as new bacteria and fungi appear or indigenous species develop resistance to phytochemicals, requiring the addition of more spices or new spices to combat them effectively. However, there is a limit to how much of any one spice can be added before beneficial phytochemicals become phytotoxins. Thus, cookbooks from different eras are more than just curiosities. Essentially, they represent written records of our coevolutionary races against foodborne diseases. By cleansing foods of pathogens before consumption, spice users contribute to the health, longevity, and fitness of themselves, their families, and their guests. A Darwinian view of gastronomy thus helps us understand why “some like it hot” (spicy, that is!)."

Hasnain says:

Micro-optimizations are always a fun beast.

"Loop fusion is a simple and powerful technique to decrease the total number of memory accesses in the program. Although we described here the simplest version, loop fusion is possible even if datasets overlap partially.

In general, any idea that would result in a decrease of memory accesses has the potential to speed up your code. If you have any ideas that are not mentioned in this post, feel free to leave a comment so we can update this post."

Hasnain says:

Great read. I was interviewed for this to provide background info (my quotes didn't make it in :( ) but this gave me a bunch of context I wasn't aware of around how Rust came to be where it is today - which surprised me.

"“It’s enjoyable to write Rust, which is maybe kind of weird to say, but it’s just the language is fantastic. It’s fun. You feel like a magician, and that never happens in other languages,” he says. “We definitely took a big bet—it’s a new technology.”"

Hasnain says:

New creator for me to follow, clearly.

"Cheung eventually enrolled in a post-bachelor program in 2017 for computer science but dropped out when Bay Area Foodies picked up momentum. He just couldn’t resist the pull of creating food videos before his hobby became a full-time gig. He launched his TikTok in 2019, and it has grown to nearly 400,000 followers."

Hasnain says:

I've always found a stark difference between how communities operate between Pakistan and the States - and while initially I appreciated the changes after moving - now, as I've grown a little, my feelings are much more mixed.

"Those omissions continue. Fueled in part by pandemic distrust, a latter-day strain of individual-over-community sentiment often paired with invocations of liberty and freedom occupies a significant chunk of the national conversation these days — to the point where advocacy about community thinking is sometimes met with accusations of socialism.

Let’s not consign Americans to be the heirs of a built-in loneliness gene, though. A new generation is insisting that mental health be part of the national conversation, and many voices — among them women and people of color — are increasingly offering new alternatives to the old myths.

What’s more, the very place where the discussion about loneliness is being held today — in the office of the surgeon general, a presidential appointee — suggests that other paths are possible."

Hasnain says:

I knew this work was hard and grueling from all I have read and heard but seeing this with the time pressure really demonstrates that. And… that’s even without being forced to see the horrifying material these poor moderators are forced to look at day in day out.

“So much of the discussion lately around content moderation and trust & safety doesn’t come from a place of any kind of actual experience with moderating content and understanding the competing pressures, both internal and external, towards allowing free speech, protecting user safety, and complying with various laws and other factors.
A friend of mine in the trust & safety world once suggested that these conversations would be a lot more useful if everyone had to spend a few days moderating an actual community, and could learn how content moderation is not about “suppressing viewpoints,” but almost always about understanding really complex scenarios in which you have to make decisions in a very limited period of time, with limited information, and where there may not be any “right” answer.
Enter: Moderator Mayhem.”

Hasnain says:

I am so glad I got the opportunity to take leave when I did (and then some). Really wishing that was normalized more in the states.

“Lacking those tight ties can be a real loss for fathers and their relatives. In the average month in 2015, 300,000 women took parental leave compared with 22,000 men—but when men do take paternity leave, the majority of them are glad they did. Research suggests that fathers who take leave are more engaged with their kids throughout the first years of their lives. Plenty of people have argued for equitable parental leave on the grounds that it could get fathers more involved from the start in child-rearing. But it wouldn’t just benefit dads and their kids; it could strengthen children’s bonds with their whole extended family.”